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Allocations may compromise quality

While U.S. News & World Report may have ranked the University number two in the nation among public universities, and number 22 overall, but when it comes to total expenditures of financial resources, the University is ranked at number 62.

According to U.S. News and World Report, the University of California, Berkeley received more funding from the state for total expenditures. This year Berkeley squeezed ahead of the University and won the number one spot as best public university in the nation, with the University slipping to the number two position.

When the University fell from the number one place to number two in U.S. News and World Report, some officials focused on the shortcomings of state funding and budget allocations.

At the beginning of each budget year, the University Budget Office allots money from student tuition, state funds, private donations and grants to the vice presidents of the University.

The Budget Office uses an incremental budgeting process, which builds upon the previous year's subsidy from state funds and tuition, Budget Office Director Melody Bianchetto said.

She said the Budget Office then distributes a pre-determined amounts of money to each vice president, who is then responsible for choosing how much money each school of the University receives. The Vice Presidents give the money to the Deans of individual schools, who have the freedom to move funds from department to department, although the budget typically stays the same from year to year.

Related Links
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  • Budget allocations by department
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    But these allocations do not always adequately support each department, said David Mills, director of undergraduate studies for the economics department.

    "Compared to the University of Michigan and UNC [Chapel Hill], we are funded at a lower level," Bianchetto said.

    Many College department chairmen said the quality of an institution is determined by the size of its budget, and that academics at the University are hindered by the lack of sufficient funding for the departments.

    Astronomy Department Chairman Robert Rood said when compared to peer institutions, the University's funding is "laughable".

    Rood said larger budgets would allow for better equipment and more faculty positions, which would increase the overall quality of the individual academic departments and the University as a whole.

    "We would like to have more [faculty] positions, but that all depends on whether the University wants to be a top-marked university or if the state wants us to be turned into James Madison [University]. That's the way we're going," Rood said. "We need more of everything if we want to increase our rank."

    The economics department has about 300 undergraduate majors each year, which is a larger department than departments like astronomy, which only has about 10 to 20 majors each year. Although the number of undergraduate majors in each College department varies, their funds are allocated using the same budget department allocation process, Economics Department Chairman William R. Johnson said.

    "We are probably one of the more efficient operations," but the economics department still could use more funding to improve, Mills said.

    "Arts and Sciences is under-funded, in general," Johnson said, and "economics is relatively under-funded within the College of Arts and Sciences."

    Mills said there are two main problems with the funding procedures used to allocate money to the economics department.

    One main problem is that the market for academic economics is very active, meaning attracting good instructors as well as retaining those professors that currently teach at the University is becoming increasingly difficult because they are in high demand at other universities and in the corporate world.

    "We are working hard to retain people," Mills said. "We find ourselves competing regularly with business schools."

    He said the economics department is "at a disadvantage compared to resources that are given to the Commerce school and other business schools because the College [funding] is not sufficient," he added.

    According to Bianchetto, the University spends about $27,000 a year on each student at the University, including undergraduate, graduate and higher education students. This number also includes money received from private donations and grants.

    However, "educating someone in the [Medical] School versus in the [College] will cost a different amount for each student," she said.

    The average funding for each individual student in the College of Arts and Sciences is actually in the range of $5,000 to $6,000 per student, and the economics department receives about $3,000 to educate each individual student, Johnson said.

    The other problem is that "we do not have control over variables that would allow us to increase our resource sources," Mills said.

    For the Commerce School, the funding is about $8,000 to $9,000 per student, he said.

    "The budget for the McIntire School is funded by the U.Va. allocation and private funding," Commerce Assoc. Dean Randy Smith said.

    "The funding from the University covers most of the faculty salaries and everything else is funded through private sources. I do not know about the funding levels for other schools at U.Va.," Smith said. "McIntire is one of the top undergraduate business programs in the world. It provides a student with many great opportunities."

    But this does not ultimately come as a result of the allocated funding from the Budget Office.

    "The allocation from the Budget Office only pays for part of faculty salaries. Other costs are supported from private funds," he said.

    Economics, on the other hand, gets less state funds so it is more difficult to pay its faculty members comparable salaries to those offered by competing business schools.

    "This is all state money, it all comes from taxpayers or tuition," Johnson said.

    "These differences are only due to public funds. They are not due to private money," he said.

    Even though faculty members complain the economics department is under-funded, it still attracts undergraduate majors.

    The first reason is that "we have such a high reputation in the field of finance," Elzinga said. People looking towards careers in commercial banking or investment banking "have come to the opinion that economics is the better major," he said.

    The second reason is that the economics major "offers so many more applied courses such as economics and Elections and Economics and Education. These courses add a greater breadth to our curriculum," he added.

    (Cavalier Daily Focus Editor Amy Shapiro contributed to this article)

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